As a business owner, you know that every employee matters. And these trusted employees are your ambassadors, a reflection of your brand. They work behind the scenes to help achieve your business goals and make it what it is.
Your business success depends on the recruitment decisions you make. Thus, hiring the right talent is invaluable. But are there qualities to look for when hiring an employee?
Every HR manager understands hiring process can be costly and time-consuming. But a bad hire, failure to match a position with the right candidate can lead to astronomical costs. These include new hire turnover costs, bad reputation, extra recruitment costs, and more.
A business should strive to pick the most suitable candidates during new employee hiring. This helps to streamline the recruiting process, onboarding and reduce costs of new employee turnover. Businesses use different ways to evaluate a candidate’s suitability for a certain position.
This involves checking on personal traits, hard skills, critical thinking, adaptability, and more. However, it’s also essential to check on various qualities when recruiting.
Read on to find out top qualities to look for when hiring an employee.
Adequate Job Experience
Experience is an essential factor to consider before making a hiring decision. This is because, as an employer, you want employees who have got some experience in the roles you want to fill. Also, you don’t want to spend much time and incur extra costs offering in-depth training to your new hires.
Thus, no matter how nice a candidate is, don’t be tempted to overlook their experience. Find out if they’ve ever done a similar job and have quality education in your work area. In addition, confirm the length of time they’ve been into that profession and the quality of their performance.
If a candidate has been successful in a similar job, that’s an indication they’ll replicate success at your organization. They’ll apply their unique skills and experience to perform excellently in their newly assigned tasks. So, consider such employees.
As an employer, focus on hiring employees who have adequate experience in your work area. The more experienced your employees are, the more they’ll contribute to your company’s success with the least training. Of course, you also want a trainable employee and can quickly adapt to your processes and systems.
Good Communication Skills
Effective communication is an essential aspect of every company. It helps to mitigate conflicts, improve productivity and promote healthy workplace culture. Also, it betters clients’ relations and strengthens teamwork in the organization.
With multiple benefits associated with good communication, you can’t afford to hire a poor communicator. So, be keen to observe how the candidate communicates throughout the recruiting process. Do they respond to your messages timely or keep you updated?
Also, check how clear and concise the candidate is when sending you a message. This will help you determine if the candidate has basic knowledge of aspects of effective communication. Additionally, check on their ability to listen and give thoughtful responses actively.
Excellent communicators will have strong verbal, physical, and written communication abilities. Also, they listen when instructions are being given and ask relevant questions whenever necessary. So, even if you don’t do a physical interview, you can gauge a candidate’s communication skills through emails or over the phone.
Good communicators seek clarity, provide thoughtful feedback, and participate when communicating with them.
Ability to Work in a Team
How well an employee will fit and cooperate with the rest of your staff is a crucial consideration when hiring. Of course, you’ll want to hire an employee who works well with your teams and performs excellently during teamwork. Also, you’ll need excellent team workers because primarily they’ll be working on teams projects.
Therefore, it would be best to hire an employee who respects others and works with them.
One way to ascertain this skill is by asking the candidate if they’ve ever worked on a group project at their previous position. If their answer is yes, ask follow-up questions to be sure they aren’t lying. You can ask them about the size of their group, their responsibilities, and the scope of their project.
After you’re sure the candidate worked in a group, ask if the project was successful. Whether it was successful or unsuccessful, demand for a good explanation. Use the candidate’s answers to rate their teamwork skills.
In addition, you can review candidates’ teamwork skills by asking them when they enjoy working in a group. If they prefer working with a team most of the time, they’ve strong teamwork skills. If otherwise, they might not be relied upon to cooperate with others and complete group assignments.
Focus on Goals
A good employee is the one that sees their new position as a challenge. They’ll devise smart work tactics and exploit their potential to overcome the challenge and succeed in their work. They see their new job as goal fulfillment and not as another listing on a resume or means to a pay-check.
To find out if a candidate is goal-oriented, ask them simple questions such as:
How will the new job help you meet your career goals?
How do you measure your success?
Describe your short-term and long-term career objectives.
Did your last job match with your career goals? If not, ask them about the action they took.
How do you feel if you don’t accomplish your goals?
Based on the candidate’s feedback, you’ll swiftly find out if they’re goal-oriented or not.
Also, you can ask the candidate to explain where they see themselves in the next five years. If they’ve clear and realistic goals, ask them about what they’re doing to ensure they accomplish them. The response you get to the question will reveal if the candidate is serious and committed to achieving the goals they set or not.
Creative Thinking
Creativity is a soft skill highly valued in today’s job market. Employers are looking for employees who can solve unexpected problems quickly and confidently. Also, they’re interested in candidates who can share relevant ideas and come up with effective ways of simplifying work.
Creative thinkers are great decision-makers and problem solvers. They take time to analyze possible solutions or alternatives by looking into their pros and cons to get an impeccable one. This helps them to be more accurate and make quality decisions.
If you want an open-minded employee and good at decision-making, look into creative thinking when recruiting.
To determine your candidate’s creativity, give them a case study explaining a particular problem. Then ask them to provide a suitable solution within a short time. Please take note of the time they’ll spend to derive a solution and check the practicability of their solution.
A creative thinker will be excited about the task and eager to share their innovative ideas with you. They’ll take less time to analyze the problem and provide a practical solution. Also, they’ll be confident to explain the facts of the case and the reasons why they believe their solution is optimal.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is another critical factor you can’t leave out when making your hiring decision. It influences how an employee will interact with their co-workers and take criticisms from them. Also, it determines if the employee will understand and emphasize with other teammates.
Moreover, intelligent employees will be open to corrections and make appropriate adjustments. This will help better performance at an individual and organizational level.
Also, such employees view intentions and decisions differently, thus building strong interpersonal relationships. When interpersonal relationships are strengthened, team collaboration becomes easier, and performance improves.
Observe candidates’ ability to manage emotions throughout the recruitment process to ascertain experience. Also, be keen to see how well they manage relationships by understanding and empathizing with other people.
Even if you come across a nice candidate, but lack emotional intelligence, don’t fall into the temptation of hiring them. They might be the most difficult employees to deal with.
Positive Attitude
Do you know one employee’s attitude can alter the entire work environment? So, it’s wise to check on positivity before hiring an employee. Employees with positive attitudes promote healthy work environments and are valuable team members.
A positive attitude signifies resilience, hard work, and the ability to overcome obstacles. Boosts productivity, employees reinforce themselves positively and don’t focus on their past failures. They focus and hope for good results even when handling a challenging task.
Positive-minded employees are willing to undertake tasks outside their area of specialization. They consult and seek guidance from other employees to tackle those tasks and get positive results.
However, it’s not easy for managers to determine if a candidate is positive-minded. Most of them pretend to appear positive during the recruitment process. But being a crucial quality, they should find effective ways of ascertaining positivity.
To determine if a candidate is positive, you can ask them if their new job fits their career plan. Their response will show how much they know your company and its culture. If they see the job as a stepping stone to a successful career, they’ll be positive and happy working at your company.
Hire a passionate candidate about their work and is willing to do everything possible to achieve the company’s goals. Ensure they’re optimistic about motivating co-workers and creating a conducive work environment.
Willingness to Learn
Continuous learning at the workplace is crucial. Basic skills and knowledge attained through education aren’t enough for good employees.
Best employees consider learning a journey, so they’re always open to new ideas shared by their workmates. Also, they share their thoughts and personal insights with co-workers and seek advice.
With rapid technology, organizational systems, and processes, you need to learn not to rag behind. This is because new knowledge, skills, and techniques are vital if these changes are accommodated seamlessly.
Also, in most cases, willingness to learn goes hand in hand with adaptability. Employees want to learn to adapt to the new work environment and better their performance. Also, they want to acquire knowledge that will help them multi-task and succeed in the fast-paced.
To find out whether a candidate is interested in learning, observe if they’re good at asking questions. Those employees that want to gain new knowledge are inquisitive. They’re quick to ask relevant questions and seek guidance to develop unique ways to grow within the company.
Highly Dependable
Hiring a reliable employee is the goal of every employee. As an employer, you’ll want an employee who’s punctual and strives to perform in every project. Also, you want to hire someone who complies with your company rules and can be trusted with its resources.
Trustworthiness is an essential soft skill but can be challenging to measure during the interview process. To gauge if you can only find out how the candidate has demonstrated dependability with past performance. Ask the candidate to describe their work ethic to determine how dependable they’re.
To follow up that question, ask the employee to describe an instance they’ve ever gone beyond a call of duty to get a task done. Here you’ll gauge how candidates dealt with past situations. You’ll also determine how they’ll handle your work environment.
To be assured of hiring reliable employees, pick those candidates that can follow through. They’ll show commitment to following deadlines and doing tasks as per given instructions. By doing so, they’ll meet the company’s standards.
Dependable employees require minimal supervision. They know the right direction to take to achieve organizational goals and objectives. This means they’ll help you save on supervision costs.
Even after hiring a dependable candidate, it’s important to have an effective onboarding strategy. This helps to ensure new employees are well integrated with the existing workforce. You can use onboard solutions, such as WorkBright, for positive results.
These Are the Key Qualities to Look For When Hiring an Employee
Finding the right candidate to fill a position in your company may not be a walk in the park. You’ll have multiple candidates from which you’ll need to pick the best. To make the task easier, read the above top qualities to look for when hiring an employee.
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